so he let the explanation go for the present.  Mary V was sitting exactly in the center, grasping rather tightly the edges of the pit as a timid person holds fast to the sides of a canoe.  Sitting so, she did not look in the least like a young woman who has just compelled a man at the point of a revolver to do her bidding.  More like a child who is having its first boat ride, and who is holding its breath, mentally balanced between howls of fear and shrieks of glee.  But Johnny did not believe she was scared.

Johnny was keyed up to the point of working miracles, of accomplishing the impossible.  Johnny was happy, a little awed at his own temerity, wholly absorbed in his determination to handle that airplane just as well as Bland or any other living man could handle it.  He kept reminding himself that it was simple enough, if you only had the nerve to go ahead and do it; if you just forgot that there was such a thing as falling; and, of course, if you knew what it was you ought to do, and how you ought to do it.  Johnny knew—­theoretically.  And it did not seem possible to him that he could fall.  He was master of a machine that was master of the air.  He was riding the sky—­and Mary V was there, riding with him, absolutely confident that he would not let her be hurt.

He did not attempt any “fancy stunts,” such as Bland had done.  He merely climbed to where he dared circle, then circled deliberately, carefully.  When he came about so that the sun was warming his right shoulder, he flew straight for the Rolling R ranch, like a homing pigeon at sunset.

It was exhilarating—­it was wonderful!  Johnny, knowing the country so well, avoided passing over the roughest places, keeping well out from the hills, and into the smoother flow over the broad levels.  The drone of the motor was a triumphal song.  The flattening wind against his cheeks was sweeter than kisses.  Supreme confidence in himself and in the machine stimulated him, made him ready to dare anything, do anything.  Once more he was a god, skimming godlike through space, gazing down on the little world and the little, crawling things of the world with pity.

Ahead of him, Mary V never moved.  Her little fingers never loosened their grip of the padded leather.  Wisps of her brown hair, caught in the terrific air-pressure, stood back from her head like small pennants.

Black Ridge they passed, and it looked squatty and insignificant.  Johnny swerved a little to the westward, to avoid a series of washes and deep gullies and small ridges between that might affect the smooth flight of the plane.  On and on and on, boring steadily through the air that rushed to meet them—­or so it seemed.

Far ahead, lumped on a brushless level which Johnny knew of old, a little, milling cluster of antlike creatures attracted Johnny’s eye.